News
Local

LEDUC COUNTY - The harvest may be long done but work to make sure the next one succeeds rarely ends. For Alberta canola growers, that means getting a head start on clubroot.

Aaron Van Beers, Leduc County foreman for agricultural services, is preparing a meeting for growers in the area and hopes to get people talking about the best ways to deal with clubroot after a higher than normal season for the costly fungus.

"This year with that early spring moisture, we did see a big increase in the number of fields where we found clubroot," said Van Beers. "The weather conditions have a huge impact on the severity in the numbers."

He explained that a drier summer, or one that starts out dry at least, leads to less infection off the bat and amounts to far less yield loss.

"But on a year like this, where we had spring moisture early, and quite a bit of it, that gave those spores adequate time to infect."

To help farmers deal with the disease and even get their feedback on possible ways to control clubroot in future years, Leduc County is holding a morning meeting Nov. 18 at the Wilton Park Hall.

Representatives from the Canola Council of Canada as well as Alberta Agriculture will be there to meet producers and share information.

"What we mean to do here is basically disseminate the information that we've gathered over the past year," said Van Beers.

Part of the work being done by the county has included a policy where Agricultural Services people inspect every canola field looking for the disease. It has been in place every year since 2007 but Van Beers said they can always do better.

"Eradicating it isn't really an option at this time," he explained. "There's resistant varieties available now which do great work at keeping the disease at bay."

He added there is no research to show the long-term impact those resistant varieties are having on the disease but used in conjunction with a long rotation they are so far the best tools for minimizing risk.

"We've used this meeting in the past as kind of springboard to get that information and use it to bring changes to the policy that better reflect what research is out there," said Van Beers. "We want to work with the grower. We want to make sure that we can keep this disease at a minimum as we can but not punish the farmer either. We want to work with them to make the right choice both economically and agronomically to minimize it."

The meeting runs from 9 a.m. to noon with a breakfast preceding it for all those who RSVP. For more information on the meeting or to register for the breakfast, contact Leduc County Agricultural Services at 780-955-4593 before Nov. 10.